Star Wars Spin-Off Movies Could Be Origin Stories

A new trilogy of Star Wars movies beginning with Episode VII in 2015 isn't the only plan that the Walt Disney Company has for the sci-fi franchise that they acquired late last year in a $4.3 billion deal. For almost as long as we've known about Episode VII we've known about the planned spin-off movies that are being developed by writers Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg, but what we haven't known about is what stories they will be telling within the same universe. Today Walt Disney Co. chief financial officer Jay Rasulo provided a pretty interesting hint.

Variety was present for a Disney presentation at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills, and while Rasulo was speaking he notably referred to as at least one of the projects that Kasdan and Kinberg are working on as an "origin story." While the trade reporting from the event doesn't have a full quote from the CFO, he evidently said it while discussing that new Star Wars movies will be coming out every year starting in 2015, with trilogy films alternating with the side stories. There is a possibility that Rasulo didn't specifically mean "origin stories," using the phrase to just differentiate the films from those in the trilogies, but it's still interesting that people at his level are using that kind of vernacular.

If a Star Wars origin story is indeed in development at Disney, which character will they want the story to focus on? According to Bleeding Cool, there's a strong possibility that the first spin-off film could center on a young Han Solo. Much like Variety's story, there aren't many details available, but the site says that the studio has been searching for an actor to play a young version of Harrison Ford's classic character for months now. The search is reportedly looking for someone that looks like “Han Solo, but young,” which isn't super helpful as it doesn't even specify an age. But if it's not Han, who could it be? We have heard rumors about both Boba Fett and Yoda in the past, but none of those stories have been confirmed or denied.

Honestly, this is kind of a disappointing direction for this idea to go, as history has proven that the terms "Star Wars" and "prequel" do not get along. I can't speak for everybody, but I don't want to watch a movie about when Han met Chewbacca - I want to see them in their pre-Rebel Alliance days when they were getting by as smugglers and setting records on the Kessel Run. I don't give a shit about Boba Fett's backstory - just show me a film where he's being a bounty hunter badass and going after the worst scum in the universe. There are an endless number of possible stories to tell in this universe, and prequels limit that ability to ridiculous degrees.